Blog

Congratulations to Josh Brown, long-time member of ALBA's Board and Executive Committee and illustrator of Robeson in Spain, who has won a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship for his project The Divided Eye: Studies in the Visual Culture of the American Civil War. Read more »

It may well turn out that Judge Garzón touched the third rail of Spanish politics by opening the door to investigation of the crimes of the Franco past. But his offense in the end can never be termed more than a political miscalculation.

The crux of the case is whether the amnesty law can be limited or superseded by crimes against humanity. It will be interesting to see how much weight international case law (notably the Special Court of Sierra Leone decision to...Read more »

Spain's most prominent judge, already charged with abuse of power in a potentially career-ending indictment, denied any wrongdoing as he testified Thursday as a suspect in a separate bribery investigation that has compounded his legal woes.

Argentine human rights groups are turning the tables on Spain, hoping to open a judicial probe of murders and disappearances committed during the Spanish Civil War and the early years of Gen. Francisco Franco's dictatorship.

In this riveting and inspiring new film, Osheroff reflects on the meaning of his activism, exploring the ideas that animated his actions and sharing wisdom built up over a lifetime of commitment to the "radical humanism" that defined his politics and philosophy. Presenting the film on...Read more »

Yesterday the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory, together with other organizations such as the left Spanish labor unions, kicked off what is going to be a week of mass international protests against the persecution of Judge Baltasar Garzón for his attempt to investigate possible crimes against humanity committed during the...Read more »

The Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives (ALBA) is an educational non-profit dedicated to promoting social activism and the defense of human rights. ALBA’s work is inspired by the American volunteers of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade who fought fascism in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). Learn more at our website or
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The following text is based on Paul Preston’s introduction to the Spanish re-edition of Ramón Sender-Barayón’s A Death in Zamora (Postmetrópolis, 2018), in which the son of Ramón J. Sender and Amparo Barayón investigates the circumstances of his mother’s death three months after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War.
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The distinction between “illegitimate” migrants fleeing poverty and “legitimate” refugees escaping political persecution originated during the Cold War to bolster the anti-communist aggression of U.S. and Western governments. Today, it’s used to justify some of the greatest atrocities of our times.Read more »

The British historian Paul Preston, who just turned 72, has been knighted—a good moment to look back on his career and assess the latest developments in Spain, where one of his major research subjects, Franco, continues to stir up controversy. “In Spain, there’s a kind of historic notion that the British are polite, gentlemanly,...Read more »

Like many returning U.S. veterans of the Spanish Civil War, Delmer Berg was targeted for surveillance by the FBI. His file, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, tells us less about Berg than about Hoover’s agency.
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Spain’s new Prime Minister, the Socialist Pedro Sánchez, has decided it’s time to remove Franco’s body and redefine his mausoleum, the Valley of the Fallen. Few people know more about the Valley and its possible future than the anthropologist Francisco Ferrándiz. An interview.
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Herman Schmidt of Charlotte Court House, Virginia, talks about how he learned about ALBA and how the lessons of the Lincoln Brigade have informed his politics. He is pictured here with his Triumph motorcycle. Herman rides, camps and hikes across Virginia and as far away as Utah.
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Since the inauguration of Donald Trump as President, a number of action-based movements in the United States have emerged Can these largely single-issue movements coalesce into a more unified progressive and democratic movement? There are important lessons from the past that can help progressives today build a successful movement for social change.
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After seven years of work, a new PBS documentary on the international quest to bring Francoist officials to justice is making the festival rounds. An interview with the filmmakers. When I visited Almudena Carracedo and Robert Bahar in their Madrid apartment last November, they seemed prey to a peculiar mix of exhaustion, expectation, and...Read more »

The Spanish Civil War, sparked the imagination and allegiance of a small group of pro-Republic American women journalists: Martha Gellhorn, Josephine Herbst, and Frances Davis. These women, displaced in war, are representative of a much larger displacement.
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ALBA's project to provide a complete list of the more than 2,800 individuals who left from U.S. territory to fight with the Spanish Republic